Cloud Platform Release Announcements for February 25, 2019

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Container Registry | Virtual Network support is in preview

Firewall rules and Virtual Network support in Azure Container Registry are now available in preview. Limit registry access to resources in Azure, or specific on-premises resources, including Express Route connected devices. The preview of Virtual Network access is provided through the Azure Container Registry premium tier. General availability (GA) pricing will be announced at a later date.

For more information, visit the Azure Container Registry blog.

Stream Analytics | Azure SQL DB as reference data input

Reference data (also known as a lookup table) is a finite data set that’s static or slowly changing in nature used to augment your fast-moving data streams. Azure Stream Analytics now natively supports Azure SQL DB as a source of reference data input. Easily author a query to extract the dataset from your Azure SQL DB and configure a refresh interval for scenarios that require slow changing reference datasets. For advanced scenarios, we also support delta queries that simply pull in incremental updates, as opposed to the entire snapshot of the database .

Learn more in the blog. Check out the documentation.

Stream Analytics | Machine Learning (ML) based Anomaly Detection is in preview

By providing ready-to-use machine learning (ML) models for anomaly detection right within the SQL language, developers can easily add anomaly detection capabilities to their Stream Analytics jobs without the need to develop and train their own ML models. This reduces the cost and complexity associated with building and training ML models to a simple single function call .

Learn more in the blog. Check out the documentation.

Azure DevTest Labs | Configure resource group control for your Azure DevTest Lab

As a lab owner, you now have the option to configure all your lab virtual machines to be created in a single resource group. This capability helps you resolve the problem of reaching resource group limits on your Microsoft Azure subscription.

To learn more, read the full blog post and visit the Azure DevTest Labs documentation webpage.

Azure Policy | Change tracking in Azure Policy is now in preview

We recently announced the preview of root cause analysis and change tracking as features of Azure Policy, the service that sits at the core of Azure and allows you to codify your policies to set guardrails. With root cause analysis, you will now be able to see detailed information on why an action got denied based on one or more of your policies. With change tracking coming into play, you will also be able to see which policies have affected or made changes to your resources. These two additions make it easier for you to polish your governance strategy, and are in line with the commitment of being the best cloud for you to implement governance in a way that doesn’t slow you down.

As detailed in Tom Keane's blog, SQL Server 2016 offers a new platform for intelligent applications, benchmark leadership through efficient use of modern hardware, an unmatched security record, and unmatched value proposition.

To learn more, read the full blog post and visit the Azure Policy webpage.

Event Grid | Availability in Azure US Gov Texas, Arizona, and Virginia regions

Azure Event Grid is generally available in US Gov Texas, Arizona, and Virginia regions, and production workloads can now be put on Event Grid in those regions. Take into account that not all event sources are available yet in US Gov regions. Services are being added continually, but currently only Custom topics, Azure Resource Management, Storage, Event Hubs, Service Bus, and IoT Hub events are available. Check out the Azure Government documentation to get started.

Event Grid | Azure Maps events is in preview

Azure Maps now integrates with Azure Event Grid so that you can respond to geofence events to send event notifications to other services and trigger downstream processes. With this integration, you can react to events when an asset enters a geofence, exits a geofence, or when a geofencing query returns a result.

Learn more about Azure Maps events grid integration.

Event Grid | New features are now generally available

We are proud to announce the general availability of the following set of features, previously in preview:

  • Retry policies
  • Dead lettering
  • Storage queues as a destination
  • Hybrid connections as a destination
  • Manual validation handshake

Learn more about these features on the Azure blog.

Azure Functions | Java support is now available

Java support in Azure Functions 2.0 is now generally available. Write Functions using Java 8 while taking advantage of Maven-powered developer experiences provided by Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ, Eclipse, and the cross-platform Functions Core Tools.

Learn more about Azure Functions.

Azure App Service | WildFly on Linux is in preview

WildFly, a popular, lightweight, open source, enterprise Java application server, is now available in preview on Azure App Service on Linux. This fully managed app server, powered by Azul Zulu JDK, reaffirms Microsoft's commitment to providing free LTS support and maintenance to Azure customers. WildFly on Azure is a standalone instance, but can be configured to scale and connect with other Azure services for enterprise-grade performance.

Learn more at the Java EE apps on managed WildFly in App Service on Linux blog post and the WildFly Developer Guide.

Azure Logic Apps | Integration Service Environment is now available in preview

Integration Service Environment is now available in preview and provides a fully isolated and dedicated environment to securely connect cloud and on-premises applications.

Learn more about Azure Integration Service Environment.

Azure Blockchain | Updated Hyperledger Fabric template 1.3 is now available

An updated deployment template for Hyperledger Fabric is now generally available. This new Azure Resource Manager template is available in the Azure Marketplace and allows you to configure and deploy a Hyperledger Fabric 1.3 network into your Azure subscriptions with just a few clicks. With this template, you can perform both single virtual machine (VM) (multi container) development and multi VM (scale out) models and connect multi-subscriptions via a private connection.

Connect Fabric nodes running Azure to nodes running in IBM Bluemix with this guidance. Orderers are run using full Kafka backend for production quality deployments and peer nodes can be run using either LevelDB or CouchDB for persistence and to enable analytics.

Virtual network service endpoints for Azure Database for MariaDB now generally available

Virtual network service endpoints for Azure Database for MariaDB are now accessible in all available regions. Virtual network service endpoints allow you to isolate connectivity to your logical server from only a given subnet or set of subnets within your virtual network. Traffic to Azure Database for MariaDB from the virtual network service endpoints stays within the Azure network, preferring this direct route over any specific routes that take internet traffic through virtual appliances or on-premises. Learn more about Azure's global infrastructure.

Instantly provision GraphQL on Azure with Hasura and Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Azure Database for PostgreSQL users can now take advantage of the Hasura GraphQL Engine, a lightweight, high performance, open-source product that instantly provides a real time GraphQL API on a Postgres database. With the GraphQL Engine’s admin UI, users can explore their GraphQL APIs and manage their database schemas and data. In addition, the GraphQL Engine also allows users to write custom resolvers with schema-stitching and to integrate serverless functions or microservice APIs that get triggered on database events.

Learn more about GraphQL APIs on Postgres.

Data Migration Assistant | Now in preview

Data Migration Assistant: Support for Cassandra to Azure Cosmos DB assessment is now in preview

Now in public preview, the Data Migration Assistant provides support to helpwith migrating data from Cassandra to Azure Cosmos DB. Running the Data Migration Assistant on Cassandra data detects potential compatibility and feature parity issues that could impact functionality in target Azure Cosmos DB datasets.

Learn more about the Data Migration Assistant.

Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL: New compute options are now generally available

Microsoft’s open source database services, Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL, now provide the ability to scale up compute to 64 vCores in the general purpose pricing tiers, and to 32 vCores in the memory optimized tiers. With the general availability release of this increase in compute, Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL can now support even larger workloads, helping you to better accommodate future growth.

Azure Database for MySQL: Read replica is now generally available

Azure Database for MySQL now supports continuous asynchronous replication of data from one Azure Database for MySQL server (master) to up to five Azure Database for MySQL servers (replicas) in the same region. This allows read-heavy workloads to scale beyond the capacity constraints of one Azure Database for MySQL server and to be balanced across replica servers according to your preference. Replica servers are read-only except for writes replicated from data changes on the master. Stopping replication to a replica server causes it to become a standalone server that accepts reads and writes.

Power BI | Power BI Desktop - GA

The February update for Power BI Desktop has a preview of our new Key Influencers visual, which lets you perform key drivers analysis over your data with just a few clicks. We also have some major updates for Q&A with the addition of auto-generated questions and the ability to ask Insights related questions. Our partners and community have added a lot of new connectors and custom visuals this month as well. Lastly, to round things out, we have some formatting and visual improvements this month.

See this Power BI blog to learn more.

Power BI | Power BI service - GA

We are incredibly excited that, for the 12th year in a row, Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a leader in its 2019 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence platforms report. We believe the report recognizes Microsoft’s comprehensive visionary product roadmap aimed at globalizing and democratizing Power BI for all analytics use cases, and strong uptake and global adoption of Power BI with high levels of customer satisfaction. Microsoft has purchased reprints of the report that you can share with customers.

Review and share the 2019 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence platforms report with customers and partners – be sure to follow Gartner’s copyright and quote policy.

Azure Functions | Tooling improvements for TypeScript support

Improving the TypeScript developer experience in Azure Functions through different tooling improvements to make TypeScript supported out of the box. Tools including these changes are the Azure Functions Core Tools and the Azure Functions Extension for Visual Studio Code, as well as a npm package that contains the type definitions for using TypeScript with Azure Functions and some npm scripts to abstract some func commands. Learn more on the Azure blog.